John McCain has criticized Barack Obama's Iraq policy by suggessting that Obama would rather win an election than a war.

So I went to John McCain.com to see what his plan for winning in Iraq was. Surprise! There wasn't really a plan. Just more of the same tired talking points, rationales, and "stay the course"-isms that we've come to expect from the man seeking George W Bush's third term.

John McCain's website doesn't say what a "win" would be. But it does say that:

it is strategically and morally essential for the United States to support the Government of Iraq to become capable of governing itself and safeguarding its people.

So the standard is the ability of the governement to govern and to protect its people. Well...I could go on about how our own governement is unable, 233 years after our founding, to "govern itself" effectively, but that would be adding snark into what should be a serious discussion about foreign policy.

So I'll say this instead. The Iraqi's now have a sovereign government. A democratically elected sovereign government. And American troops should not be held hostage to the Iraqi's inability to get past their own partisan gridlock. Surely, partisan gridlock is something we Americans are VERY familiar with. Can you justify keeping someone's father, someone's son, someone's brother, someone's mother, someone's friend in Iraq until the Iraqi government is able to get past it?

Oh yeah. And the democratically elected sovereign government of Iraq wants to know when we're going to be leaving.

And of course, John McCain being John McCain, no discussion of Iraq would be complete without mentioning everyone's favorite boogeyman, "al qaeda in Iraq".

It would be a grave mistake to leave before Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated and before a competent, trained, and capable Iraqi security force is in place and operating effectively.

First of all, I feel compelled to point out that there was no "Al Qaeda in Iraq" until America went into Iraq. We're staying there to fight off a problem we created by going in there in the first place.

Secondly, this article from march of 2007, talks about AQI's presence in the percentage of attacks they were responsible for:

 

To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."

It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics.

So even if we concede that AQI must be dealt with, there are obviously far greater concerns.  Indeed, as of March 07, at least 85% of the violence was caused by some other group or faction.

So I would say, on our list of priorities AQI is pretty low on the list when you look at the numbers.

Thirdly, John McCain shows a surprising lack of grasp on this issue. Never in the history of the world has an occupying force defeated a guerilla army. AQI is a guerilla army. We cannot defeat them. We can harm them. We can pursue them. We can hunt them down and make their lives miserable, but to somehow think you'll ever fully defeat an institution thats willing to strap bombs to themselves. They are not afraid of death. And they can hide among a population that looks like them, speaks like them, and shares many of the same customs and traditions.

It's Vietnam all over again.

But there I go again, learning lessons from history.

Fourthly, we've been training Iraqi security forces for five years. I mean, we won World War II in the time its taking us just to train a "competent, trained and capable" security force. At a certain point, you have to wonder if the Iraqi's are really putting as much into this as we are.

It seems John McCain's plan really only amounts to one word: "STAY". Because staying, in John McCain's eyes is the solution, and not the problem.

Finally, the Iraq section of his website (a whopping 17 paragraphs! really, it is nice to know that the man who wants us to stay for 100 years has thought about it to such an extent as to warrant 17 whole paragraphs) concludes with this:

But I do not believe that anyone should make promises as a candidate for President that they cannot keep if elected. To promise a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, regardless of the calamitous consequences to the Iraqi people, our most vital interests, and the future of the Middle East, is the height of irresponsibility.

Al Maliki, acting at the height of irresponsibility and without regard to the calamitous consequences of the Iraqi people when he says:

"The current trend is to reach an agreement on a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal."

John McCain wants to "win" in Iraq, regardless of whether or not the Iraqi's want us to "win". But he doesn't even have much of a plan except continue what we've been doing.

That's change you can beleive in!